Game Face
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get things right. For the prompt, "There’s a first time for everything: First times." Yamamoto x Gokudera, very fluffy.


**Title:** Game Face**  
Characters:** Yamamoto Takeshi, Gokudera Hayato**  
Summary:** Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get things right.**  
Notes:** For Cliché Bingo, prompt: "There's a first time for everything: First times." 849 words, general audiences, fluff.

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**Game Face**

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Gokudera said, when Takeshi finally pulled back.

"Why would I do that?" Takeshi asked, since it seemed perfectly reasonable to him.

Gokudera favored him with a long, disbelieving look. "Maybe because you turn everything into a game?"

"You say that like you think it's a bad thing," Takeshi protested.

"See? _See_? There you go, doing it again." Gokudera stepped back, away from him. "Excuse me for not wanting everything in my life getting turned into a joke."

Takeshi tipped his head to the side, considering him. "A game isn't a joke," he said, phrasing himself carefully, since he'd rarely tried to put these things into words. Most of the people he liked best got it without his having to explain it. It just about figured that Gokudera wouldn't. "Games are serious."

And then he waited to see if Gokudera was going to get it or not. Takeshi gave it about a fifty-fifty chance that Gokudera would snort, roll his eyes on a, "Whatever," and walk away. If he did, then Takeshi would be back to--well, not square one, because at least he would have made his intentions clear.

Partially clear, anyway. There weren't too many ways to misunderstand someone saying, "Hey, you know what? I like you," and following it up with a nice long kiss, but Gokudera Hayato was just enough of a contrarian to do it.

Gokudera stared at him long enough, gone all poker-faced, that Takeshi figured that it was time to start thinking about plan B. That was when Gokudera spoke up again, and wonder of wonders, it wasn't an outright dismissal. "Games are serious," he said, slowly, as if repeating what Takeshi had just told him in the plainest language possible was going to give it some kind of new meaning.

"Just about the most serious thing there is," Takeshi said, watching him, but the way Gokudera was starting to frown looked more like the thoughtful frowning, not the impatient kind. "I know you've seen me play," he added, helpful, since maybe Gokudera need to have his memory jogged a little bit.

Gokudera kept on frowning at him, hard enough to make his forehead wrinkle. "Yes, and if you were half as serious about everything else as you were about baseball, I'd be--" He stopped, and looked at Takeshi again. "You started off calling it the mafia game," he said, accusing.

"Yup." Takeshi shrugged. "Seemed pretty clear from the start of it that it was important to Tsuna." That had been good enough to go on, at least until he'd gotten a sense of the scope of it from himself.

"You--you--" Gokudera looked like he couldn't think of a nasty enough name to call Takeshi, which, considering Gokudera's linguistic reserves, was kind of impressive. "You let us all think you thought it was just a joke!"

"Well, you didn't ask, did you?" Takeshi asked, reasonably enough, he felt, but it earned him a torrent of truly filthy Italian in reply.

Maybe Tousan was right, and he _did_ have an evil sense of humor, Takeshi decided, taking note of the more inventive things Gokudera called him for later. (He'd learned more useful Italian this way than he had any of Reborn's lessons.)

When Gokudera had wound back down again--probably because he was running out of breath--Takeshi added, "It... weirds people out. When I wear my game face for things that aren't baseball." Or, now, the sword and Vongola business.

Gokudera stopped short at that, staring at him and frowning again, a line etching itself between his eyebrows. "We're not people," he said. "We're Vongola."

"Old habits die hard," Takeshi said, and shrugged again, uncomfortable with all this soul-baring. If it weren't for the fact that this was important... "And I don't like making people uncomfortable."

Gokudera was still looking at him, brow furrowed. "No," he said. "We're not people. We're Family." He looked aside, and Takeshi stared, frankly fascinated, as color climbed Gokudera's throat. "You shouldn't use masks. Not with us. Not about important things. Or we won't know that they're important to you."

Takeshi absorbed that, and the way Gokudera wouldn't quite look at him directly as the color rose from his throat to his face. A body couldn't really ask for clearer encouragement than that, he decided. Not really, if it was them. He cleared his throat, and stepped closer to Gokudera, letting the joking mask and the smile slip away. "Hey," he said, hearing his own voice gone low in his ears, and waited until Gokudera was looking at him again. "Maybe we should try this again." He stepped into Gokudera's personal space and brought a hand up to curve around Gokudera's cheek. "I really like you, you know."

"Oh," Gokudera said, and his voice was lower than usual, too. "Why didn't you just say so?"

"Long story," Takeshi told him. "We can talk about it later."

"Yeah, okay," Gokudera agreed.

And in spite of everything, Takeshi couldn't help grinning as Gokudera pulled him in for a kiss.

**- end -**

Comments, as always, are delightful!


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